


you want it darker

by SyntheticRevenge



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, MAG192 - An Appointment, Metaphorical Body Horror, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Statement Addiction (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29055135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticRevenge/pseuds/SyntheticRevenge
Summary: He serves a god, and what languages do gods understand? Sacrifice and prayer. Jon has sacrifice down, though most of them have been unwilling and terrified. Prayer isn’t something he’s considered before. He didn’t ever think the Eye would listen to him, but now he realizes, flooded with ecstatic fathomless knowledge, so very close to the end, that it might not have a choice.(On the stairs of the Panopticon, Jon tries to speak to the Eye)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Beholding & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 9
Kudos: 84





	you want it darker

**Author's Note:**

> This is short and a little pretentious and word-vomity but I had some Big Feelings after 192 and wanted to share. Hope you enjoy <3  
> (Title's You Want It Darker by Leonard Cohen which is a fantastic song for Jon and his relationship with the Eye imo)

He’s being reeled up the stairs like a fish hooked directly through the jaw, twisting on and up, and his body aches, all the old, familiar pains, but they wash away quickly and easily if he thinks away from them. And that’s easy to do when there’s so very much else to think about. There’s nothing like being away from all of the knowledge in the world to foster an appreciation for having access to it.

It feels like...what  _ does  _ it feel like? He asks, and he receives.

It feels like cool, smooth relief on a stifling, blazing-hot day, water tracing skin, breeze caressing hair. The Eye draws the comparison, and the Eye lends him the feeling, borrowed from the confiscated pleasant memories of everyone trapped in the hellscape the two of them created together.

It really is a vast catalogue of sensations, if Jon lets himself dig in. He can be everywhere at once, real or imagined, deep in some distant hellscape, here on the stairs, back in Scotland, buried in the stacks of some half-constructed library in his mind. 

The line keeps pulling, dragging him onwards and upwards, and he drifts. The library he’s built to house everything the Eye lets him borrow is large and twisting, shelves disorganized and ever shifting, piles of statements rather than books.

He almost forgets Martin behind him until the second set of footsteps stops. Heavy breathing. Jon tries to pause and wait, seeing Martin doubled over fighting for air behind him without even turning around. He wonders how, for a moment, but that’s a stupid thing to wonder. The Eye balks at the fact that he hasn’t accepted his twisted divinity by now.

He feels Martin’s fear without trying, it radiates off him, bursts into the air between them with each wheezing breath. Asthma. Undiagnosed. Martin didn’t like to bother doctors. Not something Martin ever told him. Jon’s leeching memories without trying. He’s become a vortex. A black hole. A magnet being sucked towards a pole and pulling the shrapnel of all his collateral damage along with him.

He’s been powerful for a long while now, but  _ this _ , this, this feeling of having a homeland, of being a chosen prophet on holy ground, of being a high priest in his place of worship, it’s--it’s dizzying, intoxicating, overwhelming. His mind buzzes so quickly that the fear he still clearly feels is an afterthought, a leftover image, the halo that lingers when a bright light shuts off.

It’s hard to tell which thoughts are his, which are Martin’s, which belong to people he’s never met, and which are a direct line to the Eye. His self fades completely, a euphoric bit of ego death. He forgets who exactly  _ he  _ is, and it’s the happiest he’s been in years. 

The fear that lingers and echoes through the desecrated cathedral he calls a body shouts at itself, amplifying, but always distant, never quite touching him--still, though. Why should he ever have to be uncertain? Why should he ever have to be afraid? He’s above fear, he  _ is _ fear, he swallows it and breathes it and thrives on it, whether he wants to or not. Feeling it, though. That’s beneath him, and it won’t save him. Won’t save Martin, either, and that’s infinitely more important.

He serves a god, and what languages do gods understand? Sacrifice and prayer. Jon has sacrifice down, though most of them have been unwilling and terrified. Prayer isn’t something he’s considered before. He didn’t ever think the Eye would listen to him, but now he realizes, flooded with ecstatic fathomless knowledge, so very close to the end, that it might not have a choice.

He thinks  _ hello _ because he doesn’t know how else one would greet their patron god, and in response, the Eye blinks. Slowly. Cat-like.  _ Blink _ is--hard to explain. It’s not as if all the knowledge shuts off, but it dims, fades, and then returns. Jon’s left to interpret the omens he’s given, like an ancient prophet reading entrails, so he takes it as a gesture of trust.

_ Why am I afraid?  _ he thinks into the abyss, and a tidal wave of that distant fear slams him hard, complete with fragmented images, static, the edges of Jonah’s voice. No answer, then, unless he takes it as  _ because you have good reason to be _ .

Maybe he does. The fear ebbs back out to sea, trapped wandering in circles in the vast caverns of his mind, too far away to be fully felt, and he focuses again.

_ What do you want with me? _

The rush that hits him when he finishes the thought is like a freight train, the only thing to stop him in his tracks, gasping with it. Pleasure and wholeness and satiation tear through his body like marathon runners, and he shudders at the feeling. Power. Purpose. Perfection. A kind of security and joy and warmth he’s never felt before.

It wants to give him the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! All feedback is greatly appreciated <3  
> Find me on tumblr @witnesstotheend


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